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Do Spouses Cooperate? And If Not: Why?

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  • Cochard, François
  • Couprie, Hélène
  • Hopfensitz, Astrid

Abstract

Models of household economics require an understanding of economic interactions in families. Social ties, repetition and reduced strategic uncertainty make social dilemmas in couples a very special case that needs to be empirically studied. In this paper we present results from a large economic experiment with 100 maritally living couples. Participants made decisions in a social dilemma with their partner and with a stranger. We predict behavior in this task with individual and couples' socio-demographic variables, efficiency preferences and couples' marital satisfaction. As opposed to models explaining behavior amongst strangers, the regressions on couples’ decisions highlight clear patterns concerning cooperation behavior which could inspire future household decision-making models.

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Bibliographic Info

Paper provided by Toulouse School of Economics (TSE) in its series TSE Working Papers with number 09-134.

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Date of creation: Dec 2009
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Handle: RePEc:tse:wpaper:22255

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Keywords: noncooperative games; laboratory; individual behavior;

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Cited by:
  1. Volker Meier & Helmut Rainer, 2012. "Beyond Ramsey: Gender-Based Taxation with Non-Cooperative Couples," CESifo Working Paper Series 3966, CESifo Group Munich.
  2. Alistair Munro & Bereket Kebede & Marcela Tarazona-Gomez & Arjan Verschoor, 2011. "Autonomy or Efficiency. An experiment on household decisions in two regions of India," GRIPS Discussion Papers 10-33, National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies.
  3. Fredrik Carlsson & Haoran He & Peter Martinsson & Ping Qin & Matthias Sutter, 2010. "Household Decision Making in Rural China: Using Experiments to Estimate the Influences of Spouses," Working Papers 2010-20, Faculty of Economics and Statistics, University of Innsbruck.
  4. Hélène Couprie & Miriam Beblo & Denis Beninger & François Cochard & Astrid Hopfensitz, 2012. "Equality-Efficiency Trade-off within French and German Couples – A Comparative Experimental Study," THEMA Working Papers 2012-44, THEMA (THéorie Economique, Modélisation et Applications), Université de Cergy-Pontoise.
  5. Miriam Beblo & Denis Beninger, 2012. "Do husbands and wives pool their incomes? Experimental evidence," Working Papers of BETA 2012-10, Bureau d'Economie Théorique et Appliquée, UDS, Strasbourg.

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